If Not Now, When? Book

This was an amazing piece of war-time adventure! Adventure during war-times you ask?? Yes, that is exactly how this is written, and what makes it on a more optimistic note. A piece of brilliant writing by Primo Levi, and probably one of the best optimistic war novels ever written.

Superbly translated by William Weaver, (who has translated several books from Italian written by Umberto Eco, Primo Levi and Italo Calvino). Not that I have read the original in Italian, but the English translation itself is able to convey a lot of its essence, and the reader never feels that it has been translated.

The book is a fictionalized reconstruction based upon sources of research and discussions by the author after WWII. The story is about group/s of Russian, Jewish, and Polish partisans, who combine and then keep re-combining now-and-then, while moving westwards from Western Soviet Russia into Poland, to Germany and into Italy, along with their partisan activity between July 1943 and August 1945. Most of them being Jewish, their final destination is Palestine. It chronicles the adventures, crises and moral struggles of the group: fiction, yet grounded in fact.

One of the best parts of the book, is that the style seems very informal, especially regarding the dialogues. This actually helps the reader in being in the situation back then. With the way in which it is written, the reader is also held up psychologically and emotionally in the 'zone' along with the partisans all the while.

The book starts with two protagonists, which is what I had felt, but following which later in the story, a few more characters are included and I for one felt everyone to be protagonists by the end of the book, in their own ways. Such balance is maintained, and every character's importance is displayed. I liked this part too.

The unpredictable nature of their journey at a time, when the characters never knew whether the war is ending or not, or how long it has to go on, whilst at the same time, focus is more on the activities of characters and their lives, how they try to spend good times, their dialogues on philosophy, poetry and music, and the stuff of love in their lives, etc. makes it a very dynamic reading. The author spends least amount of time on the disgust and gore of the war and the holocaust, although keeping it within the framework of the story in the background. This is especially well done. And I felt this is one of those super-ways in which someone can make a war-time novel so un-war like and interesting at the same time. :)

The title of the book is taken from the sayings of Rabbi Hillel which are found in the Pirke Avoth (The Maxims of the Fathers), a collection of sayings of famous rabbis, edited in the second century A.D. and which are a part of the Talmud. The words are taken from chapter one, verse thirteen. "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And even if I think of myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"The book is a highly recommended read, and I could advise on going slow while 'living' in those moments.